


So, it's Been Love

by InsominiacArrest



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Captain America: Civil War Trailer, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-05-14 00:31:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5722846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsominiacArrest/pseuds/InsominiacArrest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky's arm is trapped and it's the moment for Steve and him to reconnect before anything more falls apart. Love is a dull constant between them and Steve tries to hold onto that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So, it's Been Love

**Author's Note:**

> http://insomniac-arrest.tumblr.com/
> 
> thought I try my hand at this pairing.  
> I don't know the context of the trailer scene where Bucky is tied up so this definitely an embellishment, but I had fun.

It’s hard not to be in love at that point. Love like the moment a candle flickers to life or how the light creeps into the room at dawn. It is slow, it is glow.

Love shouldn’t be hard. But it is. 

Love is something you hold in your hands, and maybe try to cup close and forget about.

And sometimes Steve was still an artist who thought about love even though he swore he wasn’t a romantic and swore he didn’t see a lot of everything reflected in Bucky’s eyes.

Sam had left them alone, they had a night before all hell broke loose, and it might as well keep on an eye on him, look after him in that time.

His hand was immobilized in a metal contraption and he trapped against it. He looked like a weary man on the edge, long hair, gaunt face and haunted eyes. Steve didn’t expect anything less.

It had been awhile since they first spoke in the basement, he started out small.

“Where have you been Buck?” It was infirm question, wavering and drowned by a weightiness between them.   


He blinks up at him slowly, eyes darting around for an escape, it’s a half hearted movement.

“You don’t want to know.”   


Steve chuckles, “probably not. That’s true.”   


He rests his head on the metal tower, something that almost resembled modern art.

“You got your memory back.” Steve sits down on the floor, it is dingy and cold but he wants to be on his level.

“Bits. Parts.” He looks up, ragged hair covering his eyes, “a lot of you.”

Steve leans in to get a better look at him, “they are coming for you.” 

Bucky nods, he looks up at the ceiling like he’s praying, “I would say I deserve it…” He snorts, “I probably deserve it. But,” he glances back at Steve.

Steve nods, “you don’t have to back.”   


“I can’t go back to a jail.” He croaks, his voice thick with something like soreness or sandpaper.

“I understand.”   


He tilts his head at him, “do you?”   


Steve moves closer, “if you’re really you. Hell, even if you’re not. I am going to follow you Buck, to the end of the line.” He repeats their phrase.

Bucky just shakes his head, “you’re too much.”   


“I owe it to you.”   


“If you knew what I’ve done you know you don’t.”   


Steve holds his breath, “you remember the night that it was below freezing and you came over with extra blankets for me?” It was a soft breathless story.

Bucky almost rolls his eyes, “you refused them outright.”

“You came in anyway and you distracted me until I fell asleep. And you put the blankets on me anyway.”

“Do you know how small you were? You might actually have died.” He sounded almost amused, almost veiled.   


Thuds and echoes cascade through the basement from above, both men freeze, but the noises fade.

“We’re not safe…You should leave me.”   


“We are fine for awhile.” Steve says softly, “and besides. I’m not so small anymore.” He smiles but Bucky just leans back.

“It wouldn’t matter to me either way how big you got.”   


“I know that.” He responds almost indignantly. “And I’m not going anywhere.”   


“You should free my arm then.”   


“You won’t run?”

Bucky shrugs, “I might run. Nothing personal.” 

Steve reaches out, he doesn’t know where his hand is leading him, but he reaches out, Bucky flinches. Steve immediately retracts his arm.

“Do you remember the night we visited the girls?”   


“Which girls?”   


“The Girls. You’re buddies wanted to show us a good time, wanted me to ‘become a man.’”

“It wasn’t a good time,” he says gruffly and shakes his head, “we don’t have to go over this.“

“I’m seeing if you’re memory is still working.”   


“...You know what happened. You wouldn’t go through with it. The Girls understood, I don’t know why I let any of that happen.”   


He chuckles, “you weren’t my guardian Buck.”

Bucky snorts, “you cried.”   


“ Alright, that’s a part you can forget.”

Bucky cracks a smile, “I don’t think so.”

“And later we went back to my place and I drew a picture of them.”   


Bucky nodded slowly, “get it out of your system. That’s what you said, Steve, the next part,” his voice almost cracks, Steve went on.

“You just sat on my bed and watched me.”   


“Steve…”

“Do you remember the next part?”

"It was nothing."  


"That there was nothing wrong with me, and then," his searches his face.

Bucky reached out his human hand, put it on Steve’s shoulder, his eyes said something painful like the heartbeat of the cold war or the passing of a memory shackled and torn.

“Really?” It was barely a question.

Steve leans in, he presses his lips to Bucky’s, reenacting the night Steve couldn’t go through with the prostitutes.

Bucky said he was fine. That he was still normal.

He kissed him, maybe Steve could convey that, that he was still fine, Bucky was still normal deep down.

Bucky was cold and unyielding but tilted his head ever so slightly.

It is a soft kiss, almost platonic, almost a flood of strings playing between their thoughts, trying to connect.

Bucky pulls away first.

“You still cried.”   


“It was one tear!”

Bucky actually grinned with his eyes, “thank you.”

 

Steve reaches out to him, “do you remember me?” He repeats his earlier words.

 

Bucky leans in and pecks him on the mouth, it’s the taste of something long past and faded red.

 

Steve releases Bucky’s arm, he half expects him to run off like a shadow or fade like a quick memory that is swallowed by the sands of time. Like everything else had been.

  
“So,” Sam walks back into the room, “I hope everything between y’all is patched up.” He stares between them meaningful, “we’ve gotta go.”   
  
Bucky looks uncomfortable, “together.” He states sullenly.

 

“You bet your ass cold war boy.” Sam pats his arm and Bucky stiffens, Steve pushes him forward and they start retreating from the warehouse basement.

  
Bucky’s dark eyes follow him, and it feels like the flicker of a candle or the creeping of morning sun into a room. The heartbeat of someone else chasing his own, stirring at the exact moment he could feel a war starting, Bucky was here.


End file.
